Summer nanny takes day off at short notice - pay or not?

[Anonymous]

I have a bit of a dilemma:

Our summer nanny is guaranteed 40 hours a week, and then we pay her an hourly rate after that. She asked for a half day off later this week well in advance so I arranged to take that time off from work. She will still get her full weekly pay (would be unlikely to put her under 40 hours anyway). We have also paid her when she had to take time off sick, i.e. we honour the minimum pay we have guaranteed. However, she has just said she needs tomorrow off to complete an assignment for night school (she did try to text and call my cell yesterday, which I didn't have with me, not sure why she didn't try the landline). I will need to find a temp nanny and it doesn't seem right to me to have to pay two people for one day of childcare in this circumstance. Does it seem fair to either tell her that I need to deduct the cost of the temp nanny from her pay (it might not be too high as both kids are in school in the mornings, so I might be able to do the school drop off and pick up myself & just have someone come in the afternoon), or just the equivalent of her one day's pay, or ask her to work an extra day on a weekend?

Thanks for any input.

[Anonymous]

Does she have any PTO in your agreement? She is a temporary summer nanny I assume, but given that its summertime it should be expected that she will take time off. I'd suggest going to her with a couple of options that you are comfortable with (unpaid time off, making up the hours, or a set number of PTO days for use when she is ill or needs time off, etc).

[Anonymous]

If she has PTO days, she can use that day as PTO hours and be paid for them.

If she doesn't, or if she has already used her PTO, you are not meant to pay her for that day off. Guaranteed hours protect the nanny from a parent who cancels work for whatever reason, but they don't allow her to take unlimited paid time off (or even small amounts of it) at her own discretion. It is completely acceptable to say you're comfortable granting her the day off but you will need to deduct the hours from that week's pay or that you'll pay her for it but will want her to make up the hours. Then see which she prefers.

[Anonymous]

We didn't include any paid time off in the job offer as it is her summer job and and she didn't want to be paid on the books (we have always paid on the books before but made an exception this time). However, she gets a week off with pay while we are away on vacation ourselves. and we have a few public holidays that she gets paid (we are in Canada).

Thanks for you feedback - I talked to her about it and she has agreed to either work another day on a weekend or lose the equivalent of a day's pay this week.

[Anonymous]

Heck no.. If she takes it off then tell her it's unpaid.. If you DO pay I can almost guarentee you that she will take more days off (because who would go to work EVERYDAY when they can get paid to take some time off every now and then?)

If YOU decide to take time off for vacation or whatever reason then yes, pay her..